Thursday 7 June 2012

Mostly the gunblued bike...

Things continue apace at Pogwards Large Emporium of Bicycles, the frame jig is finished enough to hold the main bit of the frame in place, and as such I have mitered the top tube and intend to start the downtube as soon as my shedweek is allowed to begin. This has been hampered by my eldest child's birthday party and the accompanying doting grandparents coming to visit. Even now I shudder at the thought of ever again having to endure in the same room a dozen 9 year old girls screaming the words to some dreadful One Direction song at the top of their lungs. Or for that matter having to constantly explain the workings of my Fathers Samsung Galaxy SII to him, ie the difference between an operating system and an app....He is the only person I know who still remembers all the phone numbers he needs, and this is simply because he cannot learn how to make a speed dial shortcut or use the search function. I am not sure how things have come to this sort of pass but apparently spending several hours machining brass in the garage rather than trying to cope with all this is frowned upon in modern society...



Framebuilding progress has been hampered by many other bicycle related nonsenses, ie getting the devastatingly handsome Bob to face the bottom bracket shell of the Gazelle for me (the shell being 70mm wide I had faced it back to 68mm with all the precision that can be had from an angle grinder - ie, not much precision). During the visit Bob also started handing out old 28" guards with a feverishness that can only come from the sure knowledge that doing this sort of thing can be bartered for extended shedweek. All this meant that the Gazelle now looks like this;


I am now working on getting the drum braked hubs up and running. Last week I stupidly totted up the probably cost of doing this (spokes, rims, tyres, replating the hubs etc), and I found myself breaking out in a cold sweat and talking in a squeaky voice for a while. After my testes had descended again I reasoned that I could simply sell every other wheelset I had, and when I needed to use a particular bike I could swap the wheels into that. Problem solved.

In other exciting news, a present arrived in the post for Gunmetal Bike - a NOS Campagnolo crankset in a very desirable (to me) 175mm crank length;


Gunmetal bike started as a pretty rough Tarini Tange 2 frame that I got for $20 off TradeMe, which I decided had to be gunblued. Due to the fact that I was excited by my success in so easily sourcing a pot of bluing compound, I slapped the stuff on without really reading the instructions..... this *kind of* went badly as a result, so I ended up doing it all over again. This means the colour is more chocolaty brown than blue, but I like it a lot.....


I really like how you can see the brazing beneath the finish, and the sweet Porteur bars, and the saddle, and pretty much everything... It is also ridiculously light, so the big gearing doesn't hurt my knees so much.

This bike is still a bit of a work in progress, as you can see there are a couple of areas that could do with improvement, and I might even build a new set of forks for it sooner or later.....

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